Iran and US on oil: Light sweet crude oil prices for February were US$101.81 a barrel. They are now at US$103.74 The price rise is part of a coordinated embargo on Iran: The US has introduced measures against Iran’s central bank and the European Union has agreed in principle to enact an embargo on all Iranian oil purchases. The clash between Iran and the West began in November when an International Atomic Energy Agency report accused Iran of taking steps to develop nuclear weapons. The fragile global economy is very dependent on oil pricesand sustained price increases for oil will have a big impact. Oil price increases flow on right through the economy in terms of lower disposable income and hence demand for discretionary items putting the brakes on growth fairly substantially. Australian companies especially in the tourism and transport industry and manufacturing are likely to experience adverse impacts. The price volatility of oil is expected to continue as Iranian defence officials intensified threats to retaliate by targeting Western ships operating in the Strait of hormuz a major route for oil shipments…..Iran has agreed to host a high-level team of UN nuclear inspectors on 28th January from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency headed by chief weapons inspector Herman Nachaerts. The US is now sanctioning firms from China Singapore and the United Arab Emirates for doing business with Iran’s energy sector. Iran has sentenced a US marine to death as a spy. An assassin killed an Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan in Tehran. The US denied any role in the killing. (American Foreign Policy analyst Mark Barker says we just don’t do it.) A magnetic bomb attached to his car killed him – it has the hallmarks of a hit by Mossad the Israeli secret service. The UN says it has intelligence showing Tehran had tried to develop miniaturised nuclear warheads for ballistic missiles and detonators to trigger fissile reaction. Saeed Jalili is Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator….Tuesday 17th January ABC1 Spooks on Iran US and UK and Iran having nuclear weapons and if it gets out US would have to bomb Iran and start World War 3…..Soldier son of a friend going off to Timor troops on Code A – there is oil?gas in the sea off Timor… China involved because of oil from Iran but China much more active in oil and energy politics including in South China Sea. The Straits of Malacca are the key waterway for shipping to pass through to China and Japan with energy supplies from the Middle East….Talking of increasing the oil supply from Saudi Arabia but Saudi wells are past-Peak even though the biggest in the world – they are already pumping their hearts out and this is very destructive…Tectonic plate shifts of energy politics with Islamic jihad and nuclear weapons thrown in for good measure…Australia included – our energy supplies (gas and coal) are among the largest in the world and are already 83% foreign owned and the contracts are for overseas supply with China both the main customer and increasingly owner of the companies and profits and my question is are they also supplying the workers in the coal industry – are they de facto taking over much of Australia’s energy supplies lock stock and barrel…And the US is moving to strategically locate its troops in Northern Australia as well as a lot of other strategic locations in other countries and China is the target…And India is moving fast on our energy and uranium supplies too…And Pakistan is rapidly losing any semblance of control and it is hostile to the West and nuclear-armed….And Australia is an open door to people from Islamic countries and China to come here while we are all apologist and placatory and they are hostile as hell and aggressively antagonistic to white Australians …And we are in a war that Islam has declared on us and our own people are attacking the traditional faith that kept us strong Christianity and turning it into cordial. What do we do about it locally? Do we even dare talk about how nasty this whole thing is turning? I lived with the threat of nuclear war in the late 70s when the nuclear clock was at 5 minutes to midnight. Kissinger and Gorbychev defused that tension and we’ve lived with a long peace. We’re back there again. At that time people were building underground bunkers and storing food. Would it have done any good? Having explored it pretty thoroughly at the time I came to the conclusion the answer was No. The civilisation we have been living through has provided more of us than have ever lived with a safer happier quality of living than ever before in human history and we had better value it for exactly how precious it is because it may not last much longer. We are starting to see the tectonics plates of energy break up and the evidence is fast accumulating that the power grabs for the remaining supplies will be nasty and include wars between players with nuclear weapons. Our hold on our own country may prove as tenuous as dust. For me the most optimistic view about the threat of war is that war takes huge amounts of oil and finance and the world is running out of both. The US has already bankrupt itself with Middle Eastern wars and its defence force has already moved into reduced energy modes of operation in the face of the reality of the declining world oil supply situation. On the less optimistic side they are all working overtime to develop military robots and drones so someone can sit at a screen on the other side of the world and cause carnage.
